Freelance Friday: 2015/16 NBA Schedule Better Balances Rest
By Seth Partnow
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With the release of the schedule on Wednesday, there has been a ton of analysis of the changes, but Eric Goodman hits on something others might have missed. Eric is an MBA student at New York University. A Tableau specialist, you can check out his data visualizations of SportVU and more at goodmanalytics.blogspot.com.
Thoughts on the 2015/16 NBA Schedule
The NBA released its 2015/16 schedule on Wednesday. And while these types of releases usually spur articles about high profile Christmas day matchups, this particular release was eagerly awaited by many in the analytics community in anticipation of seeing how the NBA would allow for more rest for players without expanding the number of days in the season (170 for at least the past three seasons) or decreasing the number of games played (82).
Scheduling issues got heavy press coverage last season[1. See here and here.], perhaps because it was easy to point to the extended weeklong All-Star break and rouse rabble from that angle[1. In actuality this change only removed two days of games from the 170 day season. The 2014-15 season was the first in which the NBA scheduled in a six day break from games encircling the All-Star weekend (during which each team had at least seven days off) – this compared to a four day break during the 2013-14 season (during which each team had at least five days off).] However, 2014-15 only saw marginal increases in both the number of back-to-back games and “four game in five night scenarios” from 2013-14, which suggests issues going beyond just the extra padding at the All-Star break.
At its core, the NBA’s approach to modifying the schedule was to drastically reduce the number of games in which a team had at least three days of rest (for example, a scenario in which a team played on Monday and then did not play again until Friday at the earliest). These extra days were then distributed in such a way that teams would have fewer back-to-back games, which de facto decreases the number of “four game in five night” scenarios, as these are always comprised of two back-to-backs in a five day period. As playing on back-to-back nights or having more than two days rest appears to carry substantial disadvantages and advantages respectively, reducing the number of contests featuring those sorts of rest imbalances between teams.
It is also important to remember that these changes are spread out amongst 30 teams. This means that on average each team in the NBA will play just under two fewer back-to-backs and one fewer “four game in five night” scenario (no team had more than four last season). While that may not seem like a drastic change, the NBA’s operations team certainly deserves kudos here for taking the players opinions and empirical research into consideration and working hard to make meaningful and beneficial changes to the schedule that appear to provide benefit for both players and fans alike (the latter because no games were cut from the schedule, and less player fatigue equals better product on the court).
While much has been made of the reduction in back-to-backs and four-in-five clusters in the new schedule this understates the other half of the scheduling change: the drastic decrease in three-day rest scenarios. I’ve illustrated some key points of the new schedule in the chart below going back to the 2013/14 season.